October 2006 Newsletter

Volume 4, Number 10

October 2006

As always, special thanks go out to Zola Levitt Ministries / T o The Jew F irst Ministry for their ongoing funding contributions To First to B’rit Hadashah Ministries, helping to make these mission trips to Israel possible.

hile in the central part of Jerusalem, Paul and I were walking by a Muslim cemetery that dated back to the late medieval period.

We noticed a large area where water had been stored a long time ago but was now empty. A young Jewish man walked by us and we stopped him to ask a question about the Todd Baker historical significance of the area. The man obviously had some free time and told us that the area was called The Pool of David and was about the size of a football field. He showed us the empty water reservoir. We wanted to know more about this place and and also possibly talk with him about the Messiah.

The man’s name was, coincidentally enough, David!

He told us that the water reservoir dates back to the time of King David and would therefore be almost three thousand years old! David asked us where we were from.

When I told him I was from Dallas, Texas, he mentioned the fact that he had recently visited there.

David claimed to be an Orthodox Jew but his strange belief system was anything but Orthodox! It smacked of syncretism blended with a Universalistic view of God. This was made quite evident in the course of our heated debate with him that quickly ensued after the short conversational amenities had passed. The debate

was over the Person of God, the deity of the Messiah, and the collective Jewish authorship of the New Testament. David gradually and eventually demanded that God is whatever a person believes about Him, her, or it, and that each religion should not interfere with the other. He went so far as to say that Allah of the Koran and Elohim of the Bible are one and the same God. I quickly corrected him on this common fallacy pointing out that he was “dead wrong” about such an erroneous claim. Indeed, Allah originally came from the moon god of Muhammad’s tribe and was one of the many tribal deities that the Arabs worshipped in the Kabah at Mecca in pre-Islamic Saudi Arabia.

During the course of the conversation, Paul and I painstakingly showed David that the B’rit Hadashah was a continuation and fulfillment of the Tenach and biblical Judaism. In fact, the Lord predicted in the Old Testament the coming of the New Testament in Jeremiah 31:31, which we showed David from the Hebrew text. After that, we took him to the New Testament where Yeshua ratified this B’rit Hadashah (New Covenant) with Israel and the world (Matthew 27:27-28). David countered this by claiming that Moses never wrote about the Messiah of the New Covenant.

I then informed him that Moses, indeed, foretold the coming of the Messiah as the Preeminent Prophet in Deuteronomy 18:15-19. I offered him a booklet in Hebrew on this very verse that he later threw on the ground along with the other materials we gave him.

David then told us that no one should share or try to convince another person to believe the way the New Testament commands us to believe— namely, that Jesus is the only Savior of mankind. David made this claim on the assumption that no one could do this since we do not have reliable knowledge about such things. Paul affirmed to him that we can know the truth about who God is and the Messiah when He comes by the fail-proof method of Bible Prophecy. I further added to this that such a claim about knowing for sure who the Messiah is can be determined by the test of fulfilled Messianic prophecy which has been recorded and verified in history just like other historical events we know about.

David became more frustrated and impatient as the discussion went on. Finally, we parted ways with him but not without a well-reasoned plea for him to behold and believe in Yeshua the Messiah of Israel as written, foretold, and fulfilled in the Jewish Scriptures.

The Pool of David

Continued on page 4

Part 6 “They were pleased to do it, and indeed they owe it to them.

For if the Gentiles have shared in the Jews’ spiritual blessings, they owe it to the Jews to share with them their material blessings.”

Romans 15:27

W

BY

STUART ARDEN

ISRAELI CORRESPONDENT The problem in the Middle East can be traced directly to the intolerance of the Islamic Arabs in allowing Israel to exist. This is what is at the heart of the Middle East conflict, plain and simple. To allow a Jewish State to exist at all is anathema to the anti-Semitic teachings of Islam. Hence, the unabated acts of terror against the Jewish people. This and only this (Arab antipathy against Israel) is the root cause why there cannot be true and lasting peace in the Middle East until the King of the Jews returns to deliver Israel and crush those who seek her destruction (see Zechariah 9-14). Israeli correspondent Stuart Arden bluntly and rightfully points to the chief cause for the escalating violence in the Middle East: Arab hatred for Israel. In his article, Stuart makes us face the fact that until such a problem is addressed and eliminated, things sadly will continue in their current state. — Todd ontrary to what the world thinks, statehood for the so-called Palestinians and whatever that implies or augurs for the future, as well as Israeli statehood, is NOT the “root cause” of what goes by the name of “the Arab-Israeli conflict.” In order to properly understand the root cause, we need to read a dispatch from an incident in Hebron. Hebron was King David’s capitol for seven years prior to the move to Jerusalem, and a city where Jews had lived continuously for over a thousand years prior to the Muslim conquest of the Holy Land in the Seventh Century c.e. “ ... the Rabbis, Meir Kastel, 68 years old, and Tzvi Drabkin, 70 years old, and five other young men ... were robbed, castrated, tortured and murdered ... The baker, Noah Immerman, was roasted alive in an oven. Rabbi Ya’akov Orlanski HaCohen ... was found . . . praying ... they took his brain from his skull and his wife’s intestines were crushed ... the pharmacist, Ben-Tzion Gershon, lame, unable to move, who served in Hebron for 40 years, kindly assisting many Arabs, they cut off his nose and fingers, killed him, raped his daughter and murdered her with awful torture. The teachers, Dubkinov and Yitzhak Abushdid, were strangled with a rope ... six synagogues ... including 64 Torah scrolls, many of them ancient, from the Spanish exile, all were stolen and desecrated ... “

Search the Scriptures

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The foregoing (which does not contain the description of dismembered genitals and women’s breasts, the bloody remains of which were seen on the ground by other observers) was part of a memorandum from the Hebron Jewish community to the British High Commissioner at the time. So what was “the time?” The time was 1929, nineteen years before the State of Israel, thirty-five years before the founding of the P.L.O. in 1964, and thirty-nine years before “The Palestinian National Covenant” of 1968 defined who is a so-called “Palestinian.”

Check the archives of The Palestinian Post, the precursor of The Jerusalem Post, or any of Israel’s Hebrew-language newspapers, and you will see the spate of Arab atrocities and bombings in cinemas, open-air markets, and other places where people congregate while attempting to lead normal lives, which have been going on for a hundred years. All of these atrocities occurred long before what is currently being bandied about as “the cause” of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The root cause is the unmitigated and unrelenting Arab hatred of Jews. However, lest Jews feel that they are once again the “chosen people” for disasters, as has been the case numerous times in their history, the world should take note of the fact that Muslim Arabs have been telling Christian Arabs, “Once we finish with the Jews, we’ll take care of you.”

Bethlehem, which in modern times has had a Christian majority, is slowly becoming more and more Muslim-dominated as the Muslims make life difficult for Christians, causing them to move, and Nazareth and the entire Galilee are suffering the same fate. This pattern, in-effect since the Muslim incursion into the Holy Land in the 7th century, is a repeated one, with Muslims forcing residents out of a place even though those residents have a long history of antecedents in that place.

On May 7, 2003, in London, England, Anjem Choudray, a spokesman for the Al- Mahajiroun (The Immigrants), a radical Islamic movement which wants to establish an Islamic state in England and calls for jihad against infidels, said, “One day the black flag of Islam will be flying over Downing Street” (the residence of the British Prime Minister). Choudray’s statement is considerably different from “One day there will be an Islamic resident of Downing Street.”

The latter refers to p o l i t i c a l representation and democracy, Continued on page 4

October 2006

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nder the supervisory guidance and inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the Jewish people wrote every page and book of the Bible. The Jews, with preservative scrutiny, faithfully and meticulously safeguarded the Scriptures. They took extreme care in keeping the Scripture from being tampered and wrested with. Thanks to the divine instrumentality of the precious Jewish people, our Biblical heritage as Christians has been preserved intact with integrity and truth.

Our present-day Bible owes its immaculate and accurate translation to the Jews’ reverence and faithfulness in honestly transcribing sacred Scripture. Indeed, if it were not for the effectual fervency of the Jews in their devotion to God, the Bible would have been carelessly misplaced and irretrievably lost a long time ago. The final and, certainly, by far the most important reason God treasured Israel as His Chosen People was that through them He would give to the world a Savior—Jesus the promised Seed of Abraham. “Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He does not say, and to seeds, as many, but as of one, and to your seed which is Christ” (Galatians 3:16). In the cause of Redemption, the Jewish people were a divine channel of supreme blessing. Jesus not only redeemed the Gentiles, but also as a Jew, redeemed His people according to the flesh. “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons” (Galatians 4:4).

Jesus the Messiah is the ultimate honor and glory of the Jewish people,

just as the elderly prophet Simeon declared when he beheld the infant Christ, His deliverer and Savior. “For my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared before the face of all peoples, a light to bring revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of your people Israel” (Luke 2:30-32). Israel grew into a strong and powerful nation under the mighty hand of the Lord. In their ancient past, Israel was one of the most

“Again the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hid in a field, which a man found and hid; and for joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.”

- Matthew 13:44

powerful nations in the Middle East.

Israel was to have a superlative position over all the earth. Jerusalem would be the capital of the world, out of which the Word of God would be the universal law governing the whole earth (Isaiah 2:1-4). Though Israel was to be among the nations of the world, they were not to be reckoned like them. Instead, they were called to holy separation for consecrated service to God. “For from the tops

of the rocks I see him, and from the hills I behold him. Lo, the people shall dwell alone, and shall not be reckoned among the nations” (Numbers 23:9). Furthermore, God spoke through Moses about the specific role Israel was to fill as God’s Chosen People. The Jewish people were expected to observe the Word of God and to obey its statutes in order to be a godly example among the Gentile nations. “Surely I have taught you statutes and judgments, just as the Lord my God commanded me that you should act according to them in the land which you go to possess. Therefore be careful to observe them; for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of all peoples who will hear all these statutes, and say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.’ For what great nation is there that has God so near to it, as the Lord our God is to us, for whatever reason we may call upon Him? And what great nation is there that has such statutes and righteous judgments as are in all this law which I set before you this day?”

(Deuteronomy 4:5-8).

Now that we have unearthed the “peculiar” identity of the treasure in the parable of the Hidden Treasure, we shall observe from Matthew 13:44 the first description pertaining to the treasure: “Again the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hid in a field.”

How perfectly concise and descriptive this is of God’s earthly elect people.

The history of Israel was a gradual rise out of obscurity. The parable opens with a treasure hid in a field.

Since Israel is the treasure, then the fact of its being hidden refers to the initial condition of the Jewish people when chosen by God. Christ is Continued on page 4

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tenets of each faith. David’s apparent inclusiveness that claims we should not try to convince other people about the one true way leading exclusively to Jesus the Messiah (John 14:6) is actually looped hypocrisy laced with numerous contradictions. In David’s attempt to be “inclusive” and “tolerant,” which is well-pleasing to men, he actually is denying the believers of Yeshua the right to follow and practice the teachings of the Messiah Who commands us in the Great Commission to proclaim the Gospel to all the world starting in Jerusalem (Matthew 28:19-20; Acts 1:7-8).

Therefore, to follow the dictates of “tolerance” and inclusivity of accepting all religions as equally valid, as David required, would clearly Todd stands at the edge of The Pool of David

Debtors of Messiah... Continued from page 1

Upon later reflection, walking by The Pool of David, Paul and I realized that the pseudointellectual claim that all religions basically believe in the same God exhibits lazy and uninformed thinking which is contrary to the

contradict and disobey one of the central beliefs of the Bible. Like so many people who claim to be tolerant and accepting of other religions, David, sadly, dishonored his own position of “respect” for other religions by throwing the reading materials we gave him on the ground, rather than saying “no thank you.” Like the empty water reservoir at this location, David and people like him in Israel have the capacity for receiving and drinking in the truth (drinking from the refreshing waters of the Messiah) but reject such a life-saving opportunity when the opportunity presents itself (see John.7: 37-38).

And herein are the words of Jeremiah the prophet fulfilled concerning them: For My people have committed two evils: They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, and hewn themselves cisterns—broken cisterns that can hold no water” (Jeremiah 2:13). ✞

The Root Cause... Continued from page 2

whereas the former refers to a forcible takeover (Choudray has also said, “Lands will not be liberated [sic] by individuals, but by an army. Eventually there’ll have to be a Muslim army. It’s just a matter of time before it happens.”). This is the very antithesis of democracy. The name of the sponsoring organization bears repeating,”the immigrants” are intent on taking over a country into which they had moved and whose citizens they are intent on dominating.

The root cause of the Arab-Israeli conflict has absolutely no connection to fabricated injustices against a fictitious “people,” the so-called “Palestinians,” because there were Muslimperpetrated acts of terrorism against the Jews during the Ottoman Period, a hundred years before the reconstitution of the State of Israel. The root cause of the Arab-Israeli conflict, which is merely a microcosmic manifestation of a much larger problem, is Muslim antipathy toward infidels, and the Muslim lust for other people’s lands.

The world should take heed of this “microscopic manifestation” in the Middle East, Cartoon courtesy of www.CoxAndForkum.com because today it is in Israel, but tomorrow it will be on their doorsteps. Riots in France Reprinted with permission. and Denmark are harbingers of the coming storm, and sacrificing Israel to Islamic intransigence will only whet the Muslim appetite for more concessions and additional gifts of land. Wake-up America, it wasn’t the Yossis and the Shimons that perpetrated 9/11, it was Ibrahims and Muhammads, and that disaster had nothing whatsoever to do with an “Arab-Israeli conflict.”

Sliced salami may be a lunchmeat or delicatessen, but “slicing salami” can be a tactic! ✡ The Hidden Treasure... Continued from page 3

metaphorically telling us how Israel, in their beginning stages, was a treasure hidden in the field of the world. A brief account of Israel’s history from the beginning precisely confirms this. Abraham, the father of Israel according to the flesh, was called of God out from the heathen idolaters of his day. There existed no sense of separation or distinction October 2006

that made Abraham stand out from the rest. Abraham was hidden, being one person out of many people. Yet, God brought this great Patriarch out of obscurity and placed him on the road of a notable calling to father a new race from which the Savior of the world would eventually come forth.

Abraham was called of God at the age of sixty. But he tarried in the land of Ur for fifteen years (Genesis 12:1-4).

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From all apparent reality when Abraham was first called by God, he remained unnoticed and hidden among the people of Ur until God sovereignly excavated him out of concealment for the manifest calling he was to fulfill (see Hebrews 11:18). The history of Israel begins as a treasure hidden in a field, starting with their forefather Abraham. After Abraham came his son Isaac, after Isaac came Jacob. ✞

T

✞ PARTNER WITH US ✡ Tiberias who has accepted Yeshua as his Messiah and Savior.

Please consider (if you have not already done so) becoming a monthly partner. As you can read for yourself in the newsletter articles, these worthwhile donations are directly impacting individual lives in Israel. Isn’t that what Yeshua’s earthly ministry was about?

We thank you deeply for your support, whether you are able to give monthly or a onetime donation. It all goes a long way in helping us achieve God’s purpose and plan for this outreach ministry.

his is a humble but effective ministry whose goal is to raise support for missionary trips to Israel and to raise awareness in America about God’s preeminent call to take the Gospel to the Jews - Romans 1:16.

Because of the support of our faithful partners, there is a young Jewish woman attending a university in Jerusalem who now has a B’rit Hadashah (New Testament in Hebrew), and IDF soldiers in Haifa who can read that the Messiah Yeshua has come to bring hope and peace to their souls. Your donations have changed the life of an Arab shop keeper in Make checks and money orders payable to: B’rit Hadashah Ministries PO Box 796127 Dallas, TX 75379-6127

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Watch for Todd’s upcoming book to be released this Month!

In an age of mega-Church and high-profile ministry, this book chronicles the heart and soul of a humble ministry that is reaching out one-on-one, on the streets of Israel, to prepare the Jews for the return of the Messiah, Yeshua.

Much like John the Baptist who personally prepared them for the Messiah’s first coming to Israel, Todd Baker and his team are one group of Watchmen called “to make ready a people prepared for the Lord” (Luke 1:17).

ORDER YOUR COPY NOW ON OUR WEBSITE!!

Your cost is only $15 per copy. That includes shipping and handling. Or, if you become a monthly sponsor of our ministry with a monthly donation of $15 or more, you can receive a complimentary copy of “Messengers of Messiah.”

Just go to our Bookstore online at: www.Brit-Hadashah.org or www.SearchTheScripturesOnline.org

About the Author Dr odd Baker is president of B'rit Hadashah Dr.. T Todd Ministries and Pastor of Shalom, Shalom Messianic Congregation in Dallas. He has been a chaplain at Medical City Hospital for over a decade. Todd holds a Bachelor of Science degree in biblical studies, a Master of Theology Degree from Dallas Theological Seminary, and a Ph.D. in

Philosophy and Apologetics from Trinity Seminary under the auspices of Liverpool University at Liverpool, England. He is a theological consultant and writer for Zola Levitt Ministries and has appeared on Zola Levitt Presents. With his extensive experience in Jewish evangelism, he has led several Gospel outreaches to Israel. ✞

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October 2006

October 2006 issue

B’rit Hadashah Ministries

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P.O. Box 796127 Dallas, Texas 75379-6127 e-mail: toddbus@yahoo.com ADDRESS SERVICE REQUESTED Visit either of our websites: www.Brit-Hadashah.org (new address!) www.SearchTheScripturesOnline .org www.worshipradio.com/B'ritHadashahMinistries.htm

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UPCOMING MESSAGES

In This Issue Debtors of Messiah to Israel (Romans 15:27) .................. 1 The Root Cause ....................... 2 Hidden Treasure Parable......... 3

Oct. 6 Oct. 13 Oct. 20 Oct. 27 Nov. 3

The Feast of Sukkot (Tabernacles) Matthew 25 and 26 Messiah in the Tabernacle Matthew 25 and 26 Messiah in the Tabernacle